Mesa- and trench-patterned surfaces of 4H-SiC(0001) 4{\textdegree}off wafers were structured in macrosteps using Si melting in a SiC-Si-SiC sandwich configuration. Si spreading difficulties were observed in the case of trench-patterned samples while the attempts on mesa-patterned ones were more successful. In the latter case, parallel macrosteps were formed on both the dry-etched and unetched areas though these macrosteps rarely cross the patterns edges. The proposed mechanism involved preferential etching at Si-C bilayer step edges and fast lateral propagation along the [1120] direction.
@article{arxiv.2410.07680,
title = {Surface Structuring of Patterned 4H-SiC Surfaces Using a SiC/Si/SiC Sandwich Approach},
author = {Yann Jousseaume and Piyush Kumar and Marianne Etzelmüller Bathen and François Cauwet and Ulrike Grossner and Gabriel Ferro},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2410.07680},
year = {2024}
}